watched this last night. it was recommended by someone who reads the blog but doesn’t comment (and i’m hoping that perhaps she will now). i liked it very much but am not sure if i agree with the ny times et al that this is a perfect film and almodovar’s best. some of these reviews focus on almodovar’s take on genre, noir, in particular, and yes, this is a very cleverly done noir. or more accurately it is a blending of the noir with high melodrama (almodovar’s great preoccupation). of course these two genres do seem like mirror images–the cynicism of the noir being perhaps the flipside of melodrama’s immersion in pure emotion–but maybe this wouldn’t have occurred to me if i hadn’t seen this film. the film isn’t just a formal exercise in genre re-invention–it explores desire, narrative desire in particular (again the territory of noir and melodrama) and cinematic desire. at the centre of all this desiring is gael garcia bernal (who everybody desires). however, i felt that the film, which has this glossy sheen that all of almodovar’s recent films seem to have, ends up holding the audience out–i didn’t feel emotionally drawn into this narrative the way i was with all about my mother. others?
another note: the film was rated nc17. however, there’s no sexual activity here that seems to merit this rating. i’m assuming that it is the mere fact that the activity in question is homosexual that drew the rating. but we don’t see genitalia any more than in a history of violence and that film’s sex scenes (especially the oral sex scene) are far more protracted and explicit. sexual organs are occasionally outlined against cloth, but far more innocently than in the average beer commercial.
Mmmmmm…..beer.
Okay, yeah–your attention to the film deserves a more focused response, and I have this coming from the library shortly–so I’ll come back to it.
I liked Mother very much, but I have a particular fondness for Almodovar’s last noir-ish take, Live Flesh. But then it veers much further from the emotions (run rampant) which seem so central to P.A.’s style in every other film… and which have kept me at arm’s length, less caught up in that form of narrative pleasure.
I’m pretty keen to unpack some of this stuff about narrative and cinematic desire, though. Got any definitions, arnab? Give us an in–how are you defining what those things are? (What is it narrative desires, or we desire in narrative, other than Bernal?)
Oh, and speaking of Bernal, the significant other of one of our fellow posters said of Bernal, while watching the Oscars at my house, and in a precise melodic English accent, “He makes me froth at the gash.” Startling, yet very concise articulation of his desirability.
“froth at the gash” eh? thanks to recent conversation i can only imagine this via cronenberg. bernal is only about 3 feet two though–which makes you believe in intelligent, or at least fair design.
okay, so you want me to make sense of the airy things i tossed off about desire. this is how i meant them in relation to this movie:
1. desire: raw physical desire — in this film represented by, say, everyone wanting to have sex with gael garcia bernal (or having him befroth their gashes, if you prefer).
2. narrative desire: the desires narrative engenders/explores — in this film represented by how stories seduce/trigger fresh desire for gael garcia bernal. similarly, you could argue that in double indemnity, which the film name-checks*, it is not just stanwyck but the story she’s woven that has caught macmurray. he can’t get out not just because he wants her but because he wants to find out how it will end. (as does the audience in both cases.)
3. cinematic desire: the narrative desires engendered by cinema in particular– in this film alluded to by the film’s literal reliance on cinematic intertextuality and the conventions of noir/melodrama, and also by its references to movie spaces. not just other movies and genres but movie-theaters are identified in the film as places where desire plays out (against larger than life images). and cinema, unlike writing, literally re-materializes desire, as in it makes it visual. so within the movie there is a director filming a short story about “what happened”, and it is the film adaptation that gets to the truth of the physical desires at the root of the plot.
is any of this coherent? probably not. will be interested in your response to the movie itself. has anyone else here seen it?
*if anybody has a really big tv or watched this carefully in a movie theater can you let me know which two other movies’ posters are seen alongside the one for “double indemnity” late in the movie?
by the way, i’ve noticed that on the blog when i’m being pretentious i say “film” and when i’m being a cinephiliac i say “movie”. i don’t know where cinema fits in.
Desire definitions 1 and 2 are very much at the center of Capote, a film I have already declared as “very good.”
i watched this again last night so that i could try to respond to your comments on those three kinds of desire. and to enjoy the sight of gael garcia bernal again. you are right that bad education is not as emotionally engaging as all about my mother. maybe the emotional distance is just the result of the different subjects almodovar addresses in each movie…the mothering side of femininity in all about my mother versus the colder femme fatale type of desire in bad education.
bad education examines desire as power, physical attraction, and, as you point out, narrative intrigue. even though the characters don’t necessarily evoke much sympathy, the story is intriguing and the imagery is unique and beautiful. so maybe almodovar wants the viewer to be subject to the dangerous effect of loving something for reasons of aesthetic pleasure and curiosity. just as the priest loves the child (whose hand gestures while singing are uncannily similar to zahara’s gestures later), and later lusts after juan, the viewer can’t help but be mesmerized by this haunting but distant film. i kept expecting more explanation of juan’s rather fucked up psychology; there’s nothing like a movie that makes you sympathize with the bad guy. instead, both the movie and juan are unapologetic about juan’s lack of scruples.
i unabashedly loved the gloss, the style, and of course the gael garcia bernal-ness of it all. he wasn’t as, well, hot in the motorcycle diaries: maybe it’s his cross-dressing that turns people on. here he is more dangerous and ambiguous and interesting, not just a sappy romantic like che. this movie makes desire into quite the complicated thing by showing how many destructive elements can go into its creation (and how we even enjoy those elements of destruction).
i feel so much like i just wrote a journal entry for one of your classes. by the way, thanks for the invitation to comment that simultaneously flushed me out of my hiding place…
ashley, good to see you finally comment. i like your take on the film’s formal effect on the viewer as mirroring its central character’s effect on the other characters. i think part of the reason why i like “all about my mother” so much is because i am secretly terribly melodramatic.
Secretly?